Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
In the kitchen I ask, “Can I help with dinner?”
Rueben plunks two tomatoes on the butcher block and says, “We’re having an Italian salad with the salmon.”
I’m trying not to drive my high heels into his hardwood floors. God only knows how many pounds of pressure per square inch there is on each of the heels. Rueben hasn’t said anything about the dress I’m wearing, which I sense is how he has decided to let me know that it is not a “decent dress for dinner.”
“Fuck. I forgot to get lemons,” Rueben says, looking as though he’d like it to be my fault that he didn’t get lemons, but it isn’t. I move toward the cutlery drawer on my tiptoes to get a knife. I bring out a sharpening steel with the knife.
“Oh, so my knives aren’t good enough for the starving artist?” Rueben mocks.
“I take that as a challenge,” I say playfully, taking off my high heels and tossing them onto a chair. The dress without the heels is probably even less what Rueben had in mind, but I think I’ve already failed the can-Celia-dress-decently-for-dinner test. I cut the tomatoes into wedges and Rueben freaks out. “It’s an Italian salad, Celia. Have you ever seen an Italian salad with tomato wedges? God. They’re supposed to be sliced. Here, give me the knife, I’ll do it.”
“No problem boss,” I say, putting down the knife and stepping away from the butcher block to let Rueben take over.
“My goodness, woman,” he teases. “One would hardly guess that you lived in Little Italy.” Before he finishes slicing, he remembers the salmon on the grill outside. “Damn it all anyway—the salmon!” He rushes out the back door. I follow, grabbing the flashlight.
“Hold the light over the grill,” he says. “Grab the platter.”
“OK, just let me get in beside you here,” I say, tripping over the propane tank.
Rueben scrapes the salmon off the grill and onto the platter. “Some places charge extra for crispy skin,” he giggles. His mood seems to lighten when we work together. I hold the flashlight and he carries the platter, laughing along the pathway to the house, reminding me of the first day we met for a picnic in the woods—how he dealt with the wasps and somehow that bit of adversity brought us closer. We eat dinner on stools at the counter facing the kitchen. I am wondering why we aren’t eating in the dining room at a proper table, on comfortable chairs.
“The salmon is excellent, Rueben,” I say.
“I let it cook too long. I ruined it,” Rueben says.
“Come on—it’s perfect,” I say, risking being a woman who can’t tell perfect salmon from ruined salmon. The barefoot woman in a lousy dress who doesn’t know a good fish from a bad one. I watch Rueben fretting over his dinner, enduring one of my tomato wedges, regretting the lack of lemon, and I wonder if he is ever completely happy with anything, with anyone. We talk about board games, tennis and going for a bike ride. “I have a helmet for you. Tomorrow, after lunch, we’ll ride over to the tennis courts,” he says stabbing an olive. He knows I don’t play tennis or ride a bike.
“I see how you manipulate things,” I say, and he gives me a can’t-talk-mouth-full-gesture in response.
“You know what might be helpful to you?” Rueben says. “Getting your Executive MBA. Basically it’s a two-year part-time program. You write a thesis, and then you get an MBA.”
“I’ll look into it, but I don’t think I need an MBA to be successful at what I’m doing. It’s not actually my intention to create products that will appeal to a great many people and I think I’ve done OK doing what I want to do.”
“Yes, but one can’t always just go along doing what they want to do, Celia.”
“Interesting philosophy, Rueben.”
“Granted, you seem to have caught the ear of a few people, but if you want to be in business, you need to use connections as they appear. Then again, maybe you already do that. Maybe this whole trip is research for your writing.”
I laugh and consider how my sudden arrival and willingness to stay a few days might strike Rueben as research.
“I do tend to write about my experiences,” I say. “You might see something you said in a story, but you’d be more likely to feel misrepresented than accurately portrayed, which is what fiction is, isn’t it?”
“So, to you fiction is the inaccurate portrayal of experiences and the misrepresentation of real people?”
“At least I know you’re listening,” I say, setting my knife and fork correctly across the plate in a five-minutes-to-five position.
The members of 
Ever wonder what will happen during the last five minutes of late-night TV talk shows? Here are tonight’s notable performers: